Currently, a media server provides a multimedia service for a terminal device, and a multimedia file is transmitted from the media server to the terminal device mainly in a multimedia streaming transmission manner. Multimedia streaming transmission indicates that a file to be transmitted is segmented into multiple pieces for transmission. Specifically, there are mainly three multimedia streaming transmission manners: progressive streaming transmission (progressive streaming), real-time streaming transmission (real time streaming), and adaptive streaming transmission (adaptive streaming). The progressive streaming transmission refers to downloading media content sequentially, and while a file is downloaded, a user may watch online media content, and at a given moment, the user is only allowed to watch the downloaded media content and cannot jump to watch media content that is not downloaded. The real-time streaming transmission is different from the progressive streaming transmission; during a transmission period of the real time streaming transmission, a media server may transmit selected content according to selection of a terminal. The adaptive streaming transmission is a hybrid transmission manner, and adopts an adaptive transmission mechanism; a media server can determine a rate of media content transmitted to a terminal device according to a constantly changing network condition.
Currently, a media server cannot identify which service request is an existing service request and which service request is a newly initiated service request, and therefore cannot provide differentiated services for terminal devices.